A man who taped a dog’s muzzle shut, bound its legs and and left it to die in a field will spend the next two years in a federal penitentiary.

Michael Earl Hill, 32, entered a surprise guilty plea Monday to a charge of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. Hill had been scheduled for a closed door meeting about his case, but insisted on pleading guilty instead, said lawyer Ahmad Ammar.

After his release, Hill will be on probation for three years and is banned from having a pet for 25 years.

“There is no other way to describe this act; it’s a despicable act of depravity,” assistant Crown attorney Craig Houle told the court.

Denied bail last month, Hill has spent the time since his Dec. 18 arrest in solitary confinement. His lawyer says Hill has been segregated from the rest of the inmates at the South West Detention for his own protection.

Court heard Monday and at Hill’s bail hearing the history of the 13-pound dog Hill abused. Jessica Hems and Adam Esipu had given the dog to Hill on Dec. 15 to surrender to the humane society. The couple had a newborn daughter who was allergic to the seven-year-old Patterdale terrier named Nos.

Hill took $60 from the couple to cover the fee to drop off a dog at the shelter. Two days later, Hems and Esipu were subjects of an intense social media campaign aimed at finding the dog’s owners.

Dean Cresswell and his dogs Phoenix and Bandit are shown on Monday, Feb. 1, 2016 outside of the Provincial Court in Windsor, Ont. before the sentencing of Michael Earl Hill. Cresswell and the dogs found Justice the dog that Hill had bound with tape and left to die.Dan Janisse /
Windsor Star

Dean Cresswell took to Facebook after finding the little dog in a field beside the Canadian Tire on Walker Road on Dec. 17. The humane society renamed the dog Justice and a campaign called Justice for Justice was born. By Dec. 18, Esipu was at the humane society turning Hill in.

Cresswell presented the court with a petition signed by 65,000 people calling for the maximum sentence in the case coupled with a lifetime ban on pet ownership.

Ontario court Justice Micheline Rawlins explained the maximum ban allowed by law is 25 years and that maximum sentences are reserved for “the worst offender in the worst circumstances.” Hill has no previous convictions for animal abuse.

He does have a long record that includes convictions for robberies and domestic assault. He was paroled in 2009 after being convicted in 2005 of two counts of assault with a weapon. He breached his parole in 2010 and was jailed again. He’s been free since 2011.

He had been living in Kingston until five months ago. The mother of his child has family in Essex County, so she helped him find work at a local landscaping and snow removal company owned by Esipu’s father.

Fred Doughty and the Esipu family helped Hill settle in the area, finding Hill a place to live in Amherstburg with another co-worker.

“We treated him like family. For him to do this…” Doughty said outside the courtroom, cutting off his sentence as tears of anger swelled in his eyes.

Moments earlier, Doughty had stormed out of the courtroom after swearing at Hill. Despite the judge warning the packed courtroom outbursts would not be tolerated, Doughty said he could not restrain himself.

Rawlins told the packed courtroom she has a dog given away by its previous owners because of allergies, too.

“Is an animal’s life only worth $60?” she asked.

Rawlins ordered Hill to get psychological counselling. “People who become serial killers begin with small animals,” she said.

Hill is also prohibited from possessing weapons during his probation and he must provide a blood sample for the national DNA databank police use to solve crime. He was also ordered to pay a mandatory $200 fine that goes into a fund to help victims of crime.

In a similar local animal abuse case, a Belle River man in 2014 was sentenced to four months in jail after a dog in his care died after he taped its muzzle shut.

As is clear in the story above, Fred Doughty (the man in the photo below) was angry with Michael Earl Hill for his actions. He attended court on Feb. 1, 2016 to see Hill, who was already in jail, sentenced to two years in a federal penitentiary for causing unnecessary suffering to a dog now known as Justice. The Star regrets that the previous placement of this photo on our website may have led some readers to mistakenly believe Doughty was the convicted dog abuser or that he was sympathetic to Hill, or that he worked with Hill. The Star apologizes for the stress Doughty and his family suffered as a result.

Fred Doughty breaks down outside the Ontario Court of Justice in Windsor on Feb. 1, 2016 after receiving upsetting personal news unrelated to the case he went to observe. Doughty was part of a group watching as Michael Earl Hill was sentenced to two years in jail for causing unnecessary suffering to a dog. The group presented the judge with a petition calling for Hill to receive the maximum sentence and a lifetime ban on pet ownership. Outside court, Doughty spoke about how angry he was with Hill.Windsor Star

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